Clinical, Financial and Administrative Insights For Physicians

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Now that the HHS has issued two sets of long-awaited and much-anticipated federal regulations on list of "meaningful use" criteria that healthcare providers must meet to qualify for federal IT subsidies and the standards and certification criteria that those EHRs must meet for their users to receive the EMR incentives, one is left wondering what is the real value of CCHIT certification and do those EMR vendors who went in for CCHIT certification and spent over $40000 each for the certification without waiting for the meaningful use get any headstart?

Here is a summary of an article that was published by Modern Healthcare today:

CCHIT may have had close ties to HHS in the past but that is history. David Blumenthal, the current head of the ONC, in a meeting was responding to a question about existing CCHIT certifications of Electronic Health Records and HHS' prior recognition of CCHIT as a certifying body.

Blumenthal mentioned that to qualify to receive incentive payments, the EHR would have to be certified by a body certified by the Office of the National Coordinator and that ONC is working towards creating a process to recognize that body.
Blumenthal mentioned that even though CCHIT was recognized in the past as a certifying body, its future status will be governed by the regulatory process that is ongoing right now. He termed as premature the talk about the implications of any particular set of certification criteria that CCHIT or anybody else has put forward or will put forward.

Mark Segal, Vice Chairman of the Electronic Health Record Association of HIMSS said the stimulus law, gives the ONC the authority to go ahead and retroactively accept any EHR systems certified under the old CCHIT process as certified under the new stimulus law provisions.

The ONC rule-makers explained the rationale behind this decision to scrap the previously accepted certification criteria and process. HHS, they wrote, decided not to accept CCHIT certification criteria due to "our approach of aligning adopted certification criteria with the proposed definition of meaningful use."

Segal said there still are "a reasonable expectation that CCHIT will be one of those" organizations that will again be recognized by the ONC. He also mentioned that CCHIT certification criteria come quite close to matching those new criteria being developed by the ONC. As a result, if an EHR is already certified up until now means it already has a lot of the functionality in place.

I do believe that the EMR Vendors who spent the time and financial resources in advance of the recent formal release of regulations, they are at an advantage as compared to a large number of vendors who do not have any certification, whatsoever. A number of smaller EMR vendors got certified in 2006, but as the competition is heating up, are already on the way to getting their EHR certified under the CCHIT 2011 Certification Program.

As I have earlier mentioned in another blog of mine, just because a Physician implements a Certified EMR does not mean that it is used in a meaningful manner, one of the EHR selection criteria must therefore include the ease with which the EHR allows demonstration of meaningful use to CMS.

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RevenueXL Inc. provides best value comprehensive solutions to medical practices. Our solutions include affordable Electronic Medical Records Software (a.k.a. EMR or EHR Software), Patient Portal, and Practice Management or Medical Billing software and revenue cycle services including medical billing, medical coding, coding audits and account receivables management services. RevenueXL offers a free consultation session to review your current challenges and answer open questions revolving around EMR and revenue cycle.

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Electronic Health Records - Meaningful use is phased out

The definition of ‘Meaningful use of Electronic Health Records' has undergone a vast change since it was first mooted. With 2011 fast approaching, the authorities have obviously found it hard to reconcile the views of different parties - legislators, vendors, physicians and consultants. So what are the authorities doing? Phasing out the requirements and getting started with basic criteria to be met for satisfying meaningful use paradigm.

According to David Hunt, M.D., Chief Medical Officer in the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONCHIT), the federal government now intends to implement a basic level of initial 2011 criteria for meaningful use of electronic health records systems to determine who will receive Medicare and Medicaid incentives under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA).

The government's meaningful use definition will probably focus on goals that hospitals and physicians can achieve quickly and reasonably. Thus, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services will primarily be seeking evidence in 2011 that providers have purchased and are using EHRs. This may simply mean that you have to be able to send data and CMS has to be able to receive it.

Meaningful use of EHR to get tougher in 2013

The meaningful use criteria are expected to get progressively tougher in 2013 and 2015. The current thinking is to spread the meaningful use criteria for EHRs over three major phases: 2011 as a period of "structure," 2013 a period of "process" and 2015 a period of "outcomes."

• Meaningful use criteria in 2013 will focus on process measures to demonstrate providers have started to meaningfully use EHRs

• Meaningful use criteria in 2015 will be heavily outcomes-oriented with eventual efforts to measure the actual impact EHRs have on the quality of care.

It is expected that CMS will publish proposed rules in December governing meaningful use incentives and certification of EHRs for meeting meaningful use criteria and collect public comment for a period of 60 days.

Certification Agency for EHRs

It is also expected that the Certification Commission for Health Information Technology (CCHIT) will be one of the many entities that will certify EHRs as meeting meaningful use criteria.

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RevenueXL Inc. provides best value comprehensive solutions to medical practices. Our solutions include affordable Electronic Medical Records Software (a.k.a. EMR or EHR Software), Patient Portal, and Practice Management or Medical Billing software and revenue cycle services including medical billing, medical coding, coding audits and account receivables management services. RevenueXL offers a free consultation session to review your current challenges and answer open questions revolving around EMR and revenue cycle.